From: "Phil Buchanan" <coolcherokee@comcast.net>
To: "Mailbag" <mailbag@news-press.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2015 1:52:05 PM
Subject: News-Press Mailbag Item
Lee County’s Future under Attack
The Pine Island Agricultural and Land Owners Association has arranged a series of
Bert Harris lawsuits against Lee County fighting building controls on Pine Island. The
response by the Lee County Attorney’s Office thus far has been to placate the
landowners by proposing to eliminate virtually all restrictions on development on Pine
Island. The County Commissioners on 17 March by and large told the County Attorneys
they did not want that result, but in a confusing hearing, they nonetheless authorized
them to hire a Tampa law firm to rewrite Pine Island’s 25 year old Pine Island Plan. The
Tampa law firm has said they intend to propose “something like one house per acre” on
Pine Island, a kickback to the 1960’s through 1980’s, when land scams and mass
environmental damages prevailed in Southwest Florida.
The Bert Harris Act is a Florida Statute designed to require fairness to landowners in
county proceedings, but in at least one case here in Lee County, a Florida judge has
gone overboard in finding financial liability to Lee County for even minimal land use
restrictions. Hence, the panic by the County Attorneys.
Authorizing one house per acre would of course destroy coastal rural Pine Island and
its environment and way of life, but the damages from this action are not limited to Pine
Island. If all it takes to eliminate land use restrictions is to threaten a Bert Harris action,
then all land planning throughout the County is in serious jeopardy. Corporations
prevented from mining limestone in the DRGR, landowners wishing to “urban sprawl”
housing developments and shopping centers in inappropriate areas-- heck, even
landowners wishing to avoid height restrictions or environmental controls can just
threaten a Bert Harris action and the county will apparently make the restriction go
away. Lee County will return to the frontier days of landowners doing whatever they
want without regard to environmental damages or even the most basic land planning.
Lee County taxpayers will of course have to follow the developers around--paying for
roads, bridges, fire stations, and schools, etc. to service areas wherever the developers
decide to build things. The consequences, just like in the 1960’s through 1980’, will be
massive environmental damages and degradation of our way of life and tourism
economy, plus greatly increased taxes.
Now it’s Pine Island. Next, it will be Alva, Buckingham, the DRGR, North Fort Myers,
Lehigh Acres, and all of the 27 communities in the Lee Land Use Plan with their own set
of building restrictions. The new village of Estero and the cities of Fort Myers, Cape
Coral, Fort Myers Beach, Bonita Springs, and Sanibel will have to decide for themselves
whether they (unlike Lee County thus far) are willing to stand up against threats of Bert
Harris claims.
The bottom line for unincorporated Lee County is whether the current Board of County
Commissioners is willing to stand up to land speculators, developers, and
homebuilders. The next few months will tell. Recent Board actions such as the reduction
in impact fees, decisions favoring developers in cases such as River Hall, and records
documenting large campaign contributions and huge media blitzes by those same
landowner/builder groups (including US Sugar/King Ranch) does not bode well for the
answer.
It’s time Lee County citizens let Lee County officials know that land use restrictions
protecting our environment, tropical/rural way of life, and tourism-based economy are
the number one priority in Lee County. Everything else they do is secondary.
Phil Buchanan, Pine Island
Phil Buchanan
3861 Galt Island Avenue
St James City, FL 33956
Phone/fax: 239-283-4067
Cell: 239-789-6114
email: coolcherokee@comcast.net